Weekly News Update

*Good news came for parents who believe in spankings, when a court said that it was okay to do so. In its ruling, the state Appellate Division found that a Long Island father’s spanking of an 8-year-old boy “was a reasonable use of force.” [NY Daily News]

*Bill de Blasio named Rick Chandler as the Department of Buildings Commissioner, Richard Emery as Chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board and Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick and Barry Cozier as Chair and Vice Chair of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, respectively. [Brooklyn Daily Eagle]

*Two federal appeals court panels issued conflicting rulings on whether the government could subsidize health insurance premiums for millions of Americans, raising yet more questions about the future of the health care law. [NY Times]

*No one has getting indicted on their bucket list. No one sends word of their indictment to their alumni magazine. That said, if you’re going to get indicted, it’s a whole lot better to be charged in state court in New York than in federal court anywhere else in the country, in at least one way… [Above the Law]

*We should get rid of state-by-state tests and bar admissions and replace them with a universal exam that licenses new lawyers to practice anywhere in the country. It even exists already—it’s called the Uniform Bar Exam. [Slate]

*A Michigan judge who admittedly had an affair with the wife of a man in a child-support case before his court won’t have to face a federal civil rights case, a U.S. appeals court has ruled. [ABA Journal]

*Six months after the Justice Department called on defense lawyers to help it identify candidates for its clemency drive, there is concern that the federal defenders might never have been authorized to participate in the first place. This could leave the initiative without the manpower it needs. [Aljazeera America]

*Top aides to the governor had a direct line to the executive director of the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption, and exerted influence to dissuade inquiries and rescind subpoenas to entities connected to the governor. What’s not clear is whether the administration could have violated any federal laws in doing so. [Capital New York]